How To Tell If You're Training Hard Enough (Using Science)

okay i'd like you to take a look at this set and try to answer the question is he training hard enough to maximize muscle growth let's just skip ahead to the last two reps here one way and flexibly come up damn yeah [Music] [Applause] all right i hope that's an easy one right there might be a few masochists who'd argue he could have grinded another rep but i think most people would easily agree that ed corny squeezed every last drop of gains out of that set but what about this set this one's a bit trickier is j training hard enough to maximize growth here now for a bit of context i measured how long it took him to complete the positive or concentric phase of each rep the first rep took him 0.57 seconds to complete and that stays pretty steady throughout the set and then you'll notice that as he gets to these last couple of reps here they take 0.7 seconds and then 1.03 seconds to complete so was that set to failure could he have gone harder should he have gone harder well let's start with what the science has to say about that first question according to this paper from fischer and steele muscular failure is when despite the greatest effort a person is unable to meet and overcome the demands of the exercise causing an involuntary set end point so basically you don't just stop because it feels hard you stop when your muscles are physically incapable of producing enough force to move the weight now practically speaking coaches tend to break this up into two categories there's absolute failure which is when you just can't move the weight even if you change your form or get other muscles involved and there's technical failure which is when you can't do another rep with the same form so once your form is altered that would be failure now most coaches tend to prefer the technical failure definition because it just feels wrong to define failure as going all out at any cost even if you break technique but there's a problem with this technical definition too the reality is that as you push toward failure especially on free weight exercises your form will change to some degree so if we allow zero technique breakdown we risk terminating the set well before the target muscle has reached its full force generating potential oh what a loser so i personally like to define failure somewhere in the middle a little form deviation is okay if it helps you crank out those extra few reps to really reach muscular failure but once you start creating a whole new exercise just to move the weight you're stretching the definition of failure too far also since it's easier to keep form consistent on most machines i don't think we should tolerate as much if any form deviation there now some researchers have started to investigate failure in terms of rep speed slowdown basically as you get closer to failure the concentric will move more slowly as you grind out those last few reps for example this 2019 study found that on the bench press exercise once subjects got halfway through the set the reps had already slowed down by 30 and then on the last possible rep the weight was moving about 80 percent slower now it's important to note that how much rep slowdown you see as you approach failure is highly individual and will be different for different exercises still if the reps don't slow down at all you're most likely not at failure yet at least not using my definition and if the reps have started to slow noticeably you could be getting at least somewhat close so coming back to jay no i definitely don't think this set was to failure i think he could have done at least two or three more reps but still good enough for him so yeah he definitely could have gone harder but does that mean he should have gone harder well before we try to answer that question it's important to cover a bit of scientific background and a few more examples from in the trenches so as far as i can tell there are two main approaches people take to figure out if they're pushing hard enough and they both have some science base the first is the simplest approach you just go all the way to failure every time or at least most of the time this way you simply don't need to worry about accidentally undershooting your effort now a lot of people in our science-based niche are quick to call this overzealous meathead training but i think it's actually fairly reasonable in some contexts and it does have some science base i mean you can find peer-reviewed literature suggesting that people should train to the highest intensity of effort thus recruiting as many motor units and muscle fibers as possible however this recommendation is always couched within a low volume single set to failure paradigm so i think this every set to failure approach is a viable option for people who are very limited on time and want to get in an efficient training stimulus for the lowest possible time investment however i'm confident this style of training isn't optimal especially over the long term and that's because you're forced to keep weekly volume or the number of sets you do very low when taking a lot of sets to failure and we also know from a pretty large body of science that on average more volume leads to more muscle growth at least up to a point this is a figure from a meta-analysis led by james krieger where you can see that of the 15 studies included 11 are to the right of the center line meaning those studies favored higher volumes if there was truly no impact of volume on muscle growth you'd expect to see more studies like this one to the left and there'd be a much more random distribution around the center but that's not the case the overall average effect clearly favors higher volume now to make this more tangible when you break it down in terms of the number of sets per muscle per week it's clear that doing at least 10 sets per muscle per week is better than doing five to nine sets or doing less than five sets now i can already hear a bodybuilder somewhere saying but jeff the muscle only knows failure but we know this isn't true a brand new systematic review and meta analysis from gergich and colleagues which pulled the results of 15 studies and about 400 participants found that similar increases in muscle size can be attained regardless of whether or not training is carried out to muscle failure we also know from other research that those final two reps before failure are disproportionately more fatiguing which is not good from a recovery standpoint now obviously this does depend on the exercise failure on a set of lateral raises isn't nearly as fatiguing as failure on a set of deadlifts but on a per set basis going all the way to failure is clearly harder to recover from so if we can get the same hypertrophic stimulus with less recovery demand and can do more weekly volume by not going to failure the solution is simple we need to find a way of quantifying how hard we're training without needing to take every set to failure and that brings me to the second and in my opinion more optimal approach to this question which is getting really good at using rpe and rir now before i show you some real life examples give me 30 seconds on the beach to explain these concepts for those who don't know so rpe stands for rating of perceived exertion and it just ranks how hard your set was on a scale of one to ten rir stands for reps in reserve so it's how many reps you left in the tank so if you had an rp of 10 that means you reached failure you had zero reps in reserve if you had an rp of nine that means you had one rep left in reserve that would be the same as saying one rir if you had an rp of eight that means you had two reps left in reserve and so on now it's still being hotly debated just how many reps you can leave in the tank and still maximize hypertrophy and in my opinion this is the million dollar question right now for example on the low end some experts like dr mike zordos seem to be comfortable setting the threshold pretty low at least in certain contexts having said that you can grow just fine maybe five to seven reps from failure so that'd be a true rpe of three to five dr eric helms has recommended zero to five reps in reserve so an rpe of five to ten is a good range for hypertrophy while others like dr brad schoenfeld seem to set the bar a bit higher having recently made recommendations in the one to three reps in reserve range so an rpe of seven to nine and maybe take the last set or two to failure on certain exercises just to be safe i think that these can all make sense depending on the context for example if you're training with sufficiently heavy weight i think you can get a solid hypertrophic stimulus by leaving four or five reps in the tank that's because you should activate most motor units from the first rep of the set especially if you're a more advanced trainee however if you're doing lighter weight say something over 12 to 15 reps you really shouldn't be leaving more than one to two reps in the tank tops but there's an obvious issue here this rpe or rir method is highly subjective and if you suck at guessing how many reps you have left in the tank you do risk falling below that bottom end threshold this is why in another video i touched on the importance of doing anchoring sets if you haven't done this lately or ever actually do it the next time you train pick an exercise that you can fail safely on and go all out with good form call out when you think you've got two reps left in the tank okay and then keep pushing to see what it feels like to truly go to an rpe of 10 and to find out how close you are with your called rating another way to get better at this is using rep speed which is gaining a lot of momentum in the research lately one group of researchers even developed a set of equations that can predict how many reps you have left in reserve using velocity loss within a set so in theory we can use their data in this table to predict that if you're doing a set of bench press with 80 of your max and the reps have slowed by half so 50 you should still have 1.6 reps left in the tank so one to two reps in reserve and while i know some power lifters have started using rep speed trackers in training i think most of us should apply this research more broadly for now one thing i think we can all benefit from doing is simply recording a set watching it back and observing how the rep speed changes toward the end if you don't notice the reps slow down at all you may not be pushing it as hard as you think you are even if it feels quite challenging in your head so let's start with an example from me this is a set of 11 reps that i did with eric helms and we were aiming for an rpe of eight what was the rp i call that an eight eight yeah is it less than eight might have been a seven and a half actually now that i'm watching this back i think it was more like an rp of six maybe seven so the first rep took 0.8 seconds second rep was 0.9 seconds we'll fast forward these middle reps and jump to rep 9 which took 1.1 seconds so it is slowing down a bit here is rep 10 which took 1.13 seconds so about the same speed there and then here's my last attempted rep which took 1.23 seconds so when i do it the math that's 28 velocity loss from the first or fastest rep to the last rep and if just for fun we round that up to 30 and plug it into the squat data from the rodriguez russell study that would correspond to 3.5 reps in reserve assuming the set was around 70 of my one rep max which i think is fair so 3.5 reps in reserve would be an rpe of six or seven not eight now i honestly don't think we can extrapolate this data across exercises like this so i'm just gonna keep it in mind but ultimately put it away for the next few examples we'll cover and while i definitely wouldn't call this a useless set especially when doing multiple sets in my opinion i probably should have done another one or two reps to get in that rpe8 zone okay next let's see an example of what zero reps in reserve or rp 10 really looks like this is a set from men's classic physique champ chris bumstead so let's pay attention to how his rep speed changes throughout the set so he's just finishing rep four here so this is rep five and we're at one point two seven seconds rep six is one point two three seconds rep seven a bit of a grind one point nine seconds are you still going at rep eight we're at 1.9 seconds again now rep 9 is considerably slower at 2.5 seconds now here is his last rep much slower a full 3.2 seconds and i think that's it i don't think he could have got another rep without a lot of help from his spotter now playing this back i personally would save this level of exertion for the last set of an exercise or you could even stop two reps shy of where chris did to mitigate fatigue a bit and then push like this in the last week of a training phase but i still think this was a beautifully executed set to zero rir or maybe slightly beyond if you think a spotter helped a bit on those last few reps there all right so let's see an example of what one rep in reserve really looks like now in my opinion this is where a good chunk of your training should be if your main goal is to maximize hypertrophy so this is a set of six reps by ifbb pro john meadows let's watch oh yeah easy easy let's go come on two more yep one more nice easy so yeah watching this back you can see john has a very explosive tempo and pretty consistent rep speed throughout the set and then he starts to hit the wall more abruptly on these last couple reps here but based on this last rep speed i'd say he could have done one more rep with a big grind but no more than that okay next let's look at an rpe seven to eight set so leaving two to three reps in reserve this is a set of eight reps from ifbb pro kai green so these first few reps are moving really smooth and consistent i think he's getting a little boost from his spotter but judging by the bar speed of these last few reps here it looks to me like he had another two maybe three reps in the tank and of course i think this is a perfectly stimulative working set especially given the load he's moving okay next i want to look at a set that probably isn't stimulative enough to maximize hypertrophy to a set to an rpe of five or less now of course there are tons of examples of ronnie coleman going to an rpe 10 and beyond i personally think he's the greatest bodybuilder of all time and no one in their right mind would argue that ronnie didn't train hard enough [Applause] [Music] but as an exception to the rule i did want to look at this set of pull downs because this is the type of set you see all the time where someone calls it off before they get anywhere near a failure now this could have been a warm-up set for ronnie and he might have done 20 more sets after this i'm not sure but on a per-set basis i would say this proximity to failure would be insufficiently stimulative for the average person to maximize hypertrophy and judging by these last few reps here i would say he still had another five to ten reps left in the tank no real rep speed slow down no real grindy reps now by contrast here's the last three reps on a set of pull downs from natural pro alberto nunez to a true rpe of 9 or 10. notice how he doesn't break technique at all and really grinds out the concentric on this last rep here which takes a full 4.17 seconds to complete and i would say this is perfect effort for the last set of back on a pull day okay now let's take a look at a set that i would say is in my opinion too much effort so this is a recent set of five reps from ifbb pro greg doucet now i know greg's working around an injury and hasn't squat in a while so keep that in mind but i did want to include this because i think it illustrates another type of set that we see very often which is when you feel the need to push to an rpe of 10 even when it comes at a higher risk and recovery cost so my two cents on this set would be to strip the weight back start at something around an rp7 and then over the coming weeks as you get more locked in with the technique gradually ramp the rpe up over time or if you really want to take a set to an rpe 10 like this which certainly does have its place i just save it for a machine or isolation exercise or until you get the form more dialed in again now by contrast here's a hard set of six reps on the squat from matt ogus that leaves one maybe two reps in the tank and we jumped in here on rep three of six just to save time so this is rep four right here now in my opinion this is a more effective but still very hard set you'll notice his technique is completely dialed in and while he isn't breaking his back trying to get the weight up you can still see the reps slowing down as he gets closer to the end of the set here now he pauses on this last rep which you'll see and that makes the concentric a bit slower but i still think this is the perfect example of an rpe eight or nine set that should still probably come toward the end of a training cycle okay and lastly i want to look at a few examples that seem to break the rules first let's look at this set of deadlifts from steffi cohen and i want you to watch this first rep closely okay i'm gonna pause it there actually let's swatch it back again okay so after that first rep do you think she's got another rep in the tank or is this rpe 10 already let's see so here's rep two and rep three and this is rep four and rep five we're just gonna keep going rep six she's not done yet that's rep number seven and she's still got more this is rep eight still going rep nine is finally starting to slow down a bit and i think she's gonna go for one more here so this one is a big grind almost a five second rep and she's done so yeah that would have been really hard to gauge based on that first rep speed so just keep that in mind you can't always just look at a single rep in isolation and determine rir based on that alone there are big individual differences with this okay here's another example of when it's hard to gauge rir based on rep speed so this is a set of elevated dumbbell squats from ifbb pro sunny andrews where she's using a strong mind muscle connection constant tension and a very smooth tempo on both the positive and the negative for the other examples we covered i picked lifts that use a more explosive tempo on the positive because that's how the reps are performed in the studies i mentioned but if you're purposefully modifying the concentric tempo and really emphasizing the mind muscle connection it does make it a lot harder to judge reps in reserve using rep speed so with all this information in mind let's come back to this set from jay at the beginning was this set hard enough to maximize muscle growth i think yes even though he may not have seen as much rep speed slow down as some of the other examples after watching hours of his training footage i've noticed that despite his more explosive tempo jay seems to also use a very strong mind-muscle connection and a more consistent cadence on his reps which means i suspect he's one of those lifters that makes the weight look really easy and then when they hit the wall it happens more abruptly so yeah i think this set would be maximally stimulative for hypertrophy even for the average person lifting much lighter absolute loads but since this is an evolving area of research and discussion i want to also leave the question open and pass it off to you guys how many reps do you think he had in the tank and was he close enough to failure as always i hope you guys found the video helpful and i'll see you guys all here in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Jeff Nippard

Views: 339,979

Rating: 4.9647584 out of 5

Keywords: jeff nipard, jay cutler, arnold, greg doucette, ronnie coleman, chris bumstead, john meadows, mountain dog, stefi cohen, sunny andrews, alberto nunez, matt ogus, kai greene, reps to failure, arnold reps to failure, effective reps, train to failure, max effort training, how hard should you train, how to train to failure, should you train to failure, when to workout to failure, training to failure for muscle growth, training to failure, RIR, RPE, jeff nippard RPE, rep speed

Id: deDlhPmT2SY

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021

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[u/61742]

I've actually investigated velocity drop and minimum speeds across hundreds of sets and my only conclusion is that using velocity loss like this is pretty much totally unviable. I really believe this approach is totally misguided. At least I'm 100% sure it's not more accurate or effective than perception, though it is possible that combining perception and velocity drop could be slightly more accurate (but that'd be really low yield for the work involved). And that's not even addressing how iffy it is going to failure or aiming for an exact RIR (which the video does address). I think anybody filming to literally time their reps to guess if they should work harder is wasting their time and missing the forest for the trees with their training.

I've had plenty of sets where the 2nd to last rep is faster than expected and the last is suddenly a grinder, followed by a set where the 3rd to last is faster than expected, the 2nd to last actually is fast, then the last is decently paced. I've also obviously had a fast last rep and a failed next rep too. There's some days where speed steadily drops, some where it maintains and suddenly drops, and some where it even has multiple dips and recoveries. It's just way too inconsistent. Top and minimum speeds vary, drop off pace varies, the general shape of speed drop off varies, everything here is way too inconsistent to possibly estimate RIR.

He says drop probably varies by person and by exercise, but in my experience it varies drastically day-to-day or even set-to-set (or even further: on certain days variability even varies set to set). Unless I'm some weird anomaly, nobody is estimating anything tangible this way.

One big side note is that intent absolutely has a massive effect on velocity, and all calculations are more effective if you consciously move each rep as quickly as possible.

Another big side note is afaik the velocity training community seems to be in consensus that velocity tracking doesn't work well for deadlifts. I also find it challenging for the top end of front squats and I talked to Mike Tuchscherer and he said he feels so as well. I'm sure there are more lift-to-lift issues. (edit: Oh, another example I just remembered is low-end speeds are absolutely busted for OHP for me.)

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For what it's worth, the way I do use velocity is to extrapolate an estimated max range using both the top and minimum velocity, and then I conservatively aim for a set within that range and treating it as a semi-AMRAP with a target in mind. It's not anywhere near accurate enough for actually estimating a max or guessing how many reps you'll get on a given set or a given weight or whatever.

[u/Naltzy]

Training intensity is for some reason a very controversial topic.

On one side, some train with really low intensity in the name of science. On the other side, some train all out to failure in the name of broscience because it gives them these "magical gainz".

Alright, so: The closer you are to failure, the more stimulus (the bros wins on this one). However, the closer you are to failure, the more fatigue. Even though we can't possibly train productively without fatigue, we don't want unnecessary amounts of it. All overloading training, will result in an accumulation of fatigue (which is why we have deloads).

Based on the research we have, about an average of 2 RIR (reps in reserve), seems to be the sweetspot for SFR (stimulus to fatigue ratio).

However, based on where you are in the mesocycle, the amount of stimulus needed, varies. Therefore, the (my and RP's) recommended approach would be:

Start your mesocycle at 4-2 RIR, depending on how advanced you are. Every microcycle, you add a rep, some weight, or a combination of both (progressive overload). Throughout the weeks, you're progressively getting closer and closer to failure. Towards the end, when you PHYSICALLY CAN'T PROGRESS ANYMORE (you're at 0RIR, failure), take a deload and repeat the whole process.

[u/CL-Young]

If I had the capability of doing 15 reps, and only did 5, is that an RPE of -5?

[u/sirlanceb]

Any time I film a high effort squat , the speed never matches how it feels. Since the best way to slow down time is to squat heavy.

[u/BiteyMax22]

Watched this video before my workout this morning which ended with the reverse hyper.

Asking the boards opinion on when you fail on a reverse hyper as its easy to let the momentum carry you for a few more reps. Is it when the pendulum stops swinging? Is it when you're no longer going as high as you started? The one I use is when I feel like I'm no longer providing resistance on the downswing?

Thoughts?

[u/UpperBroccoli]

I'll totally save this video so I can use it to guide me for a time in the far future when all of this makes sense for my exercise regimen because I look like these absolute unit pro bodybuilder guys... instead of a salami with legs.